Joe Pietruch

Posted by Joe at February 22nd, 2008

As part of my Deaf History course, I’m doing a research paper on ASL Illustration. One of the particular illustrators is the late Frank Allen Paul. He was the go-to guy back in the day for ASL illustrating!

Trolling the web for information before going to the library tomorrow, I happened across SignWriting. SignWriting is the practice of writing out American (or other) Sign Language on paper. Michael Everson went and created a TrueType font, which, upon finding, I promptly downloaded.

If you know ASL, or AS 3.0 (preferably both), you may find this picture interesting:

Yes, I did. I’m thinking about keeping it that way. It’s not like anyone else needs to read my code! Besides, their own machines will use their own preferred font.

For more information on SignWriting and Sutton US, go to: http://www.signwriting.org/

Posted by Joe at January 14th, 2008

I’m currently developing a laser-pointer and webcam pointing device for a 3D game. One of the issues one runs into with this situation arises when you’re setting up the webcam. What happens if the webcam does not have a direct angle on the surface it’s looking at? What you get is this weird quadrilateral that can’t be used to directly map the laser to the mouse.

I’ve written a test program in Processing to address this problem. The white squares define the edges of the usable area. The little red square controlled by the mouse represents the laser pointer, and the larger red circle represents the cursor as the final program would interpret it. The goal is to pretend the area in the box and the area of the program are two perspectives of the same element. Every frame, the program tries to track down the x and y position of the laser dot. It follows a guess and check algorithm, and each guess is shown as a line within the box.

Note that you may click and drag the white boxes to change the shape of the usable area. Check it out!

Posted by Joe at January 11th, 2008

In preparation for a logo animation involving circles, I did some fun math for solving the intersection of two circles. Here’s a rough guess at what the logo will look like:

And here’s a link to my math work in proce55ing / processing - however you want to spell it.

Posted by Joe at January 9th, 2008

I took the first one million digits of Pi, and pulled ten random colors from a photograph to show numbers zero through nine.

Every square was assigned a different number from the first one million digits of Pi, and colored with the color assigned to that number.

Each square then progresses to the next color at its own rate, making a twinkling animation. Click the image above to go see the animation!

Posted by Joe at December 6th, 2007

I could watch this all day. Actually, for almost 3 days.
Pi3D: Version 1 (give it a moment or several)

I loaded a text file containing the first million decimals of pi into proce55ing.  I then created about 180 PiPoint objects to keep track of waveform values. I have an offset counter that keeps track of what point we’re on, and each PiPoint is smart enough to find out its y-value based on the offset counter and its distance from the front of the ribbon.

In actuality, the ribbon stays in place, while the values of pi tween through it. When the points change direction it means they’ve reached a whole decimal. The slope in between represents the difference between consecutive numerals. For example, if you take 3.14, the difference between 1 and 4 is three. So if you start at a ribbon value of 1 (the 1 in 3.14) and travel 1/3 of the distance between the 1 and the 4, you’ll arrive at a ribbon value of 2. Likewise, 2/3 of the distance gets you to 3, and 3/3 (all the distance) gets you all the way to 4.

A displacement of n in the offset counter is the same as no displacement but starting pi at 10*pi*n.  It’s really not mathematically significant at all, but it looks pretty cool.

Posted by Joe at December 5th, 2007

Tried my hand at Processing. Interesting stuff. Just playing around to find out what the capabilities are. Here are some links:

Moving dots: Dots

3D Cube: Cube  (takes a little while)

Posted by Joe at December 2nd, 2007

  I crossed a line today.

I’ve opted to brush the dust off of my old PC (you know, that one I was using freshman/sophomore year of college, before upgrading to this shiny new Core-2 64-bit 8-Gig-o-RAM system I built for myself) and turn it into a Linux server.

Why? Because it’s something completely new and foreign to me, and I had some time and ambition to do so. My ultimate goal is to create a (slow but working) Red5 server. Red5 (FREE!) is the open-source alternative to the Adobe Media Server ($$$$$.$$!) - both of which allow users of my various flash programs to communicate with other users. In other words, I will be able to host my own multi-user apps, instead of relying on newmedia.rit.edu for this technology.

In the past few hours, I have learned more than I’ll be able to convey in this entry and the subsequent entries to follow on the same topic. I will summarize to give those who know Linux a chance to laugh at my newbieness, and those who know as much as I did yesterday a chance to gape at my newfound uber-geekdom:

(more…)

Posted by Joe at November 16th, 2007

I can say I’ve had a successful fall quarter. I decreased the amount of extra-curricular activities I was participating in, which opened up more time for coursework, allowing me to perform at the level I knew I was capable of but unable to demonstrate last year.

If you don’t believe me, check out the work I’ve done for one of my courses, Dynamic Persuasion Design:

Project 1 - Consensus | Project 2 - Tile | Project 3 - evilprinter.com

I’ve added a number of new skills to my repertoire. All three of those projects are in ActionScript 3.0. All of them use PHP/MySQL extensively to aid in content management. And the last two employ the Flash Media Server, either to broadcast messages between clients, or to stream video from a webcam. Not too shabby.

- Joe

Posted by Joe at October 12th, 2007

Check out the following swf:

Click to see behind the scenes, or to go back to the first view.

I want a camera that will simultaneously expose visible light and some other spectrum that is strongest when bouncing off things close to the camera, and weakest on those things furthest away. Then I could make these as easy as pressing the shutter release.

Posted by Joe at October 10th, 2007

This was my life for the past week.5 or so. Enjoy!

http://testing.jp-design.net/tests/ 

It works best with two web browsers or many people. Give me some user-generated-content!